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Even before Gillen’s friendship with Spencer gave his ethnological enthusiasms direction, he stamped his
compassionate individualism on society in the Centre. His humanitarian efforts to provide paternalistic justice
for Aborigines, amongst whom he moved unarmed, culminated in the celebrated Willshire trial. Gillen charged
Mounted Constable W H Willshire with murdering Aborigines. Although ample proof existed, a Port Augusta
jury cleared Willshire, but he never returned to Alice Springs. Gillen hosted South Australia’s governor, the Earl
of Kintore, during his 1891 transcontinental journey. When the Earl left Australia, Gillen telegraphed farewell
with the unconventional hope that Kintore’s Australian experience had converted him to the Home Rule cause.
Gillen always remained a boisterous and genial Irishman, the butt of many jokes in the bush and the source of some
disapproval from his superior, Sir Charles Todd.
Gillen was an inveterate gambler, on horses and in mining stock. Doubtless telegraph operators became
mesmerised by the financial news transmitted along their wire to London from Western Australian goldfields.
Gillen strove also to produce golden messages from the Arltunga field, east of Alice Springs. As the ‘local
correspondent’ he boosted mining prospects in an Adelaide newspaper; he officiated at the opening of its ten-head
stamping mill in 1898; and he promoted a syndicate to tap its wealth. Both his Wheal Fortune and Star of the
North reefs proved virtually worthless and his venture lost heavily. Spencer assisted Gillen in his financial plight
by purchasing his ethnographic collection for his museum in 1899.
The Spencer and Gillen partnership developed in 1894, during the three weeks Spencer lived in Gillen’s
home after the departure of other Horn Scientific Expedition members. As editor of the Horn volumes, Spencer
encouraged Gillen to contribute material; later he urged further independent publication of ethnological data.
Spencer soon realised that the stream of letters that Gillen sent him contained unique material that required greater
synthesis. Spencer returned to Alice Springs during the summer of 1896–97, where Gillen’s influence with tribal
elders sufficed to promote various sacred rituals, which were conducted adjacent to the telegraph station.
While Gillen provided the cast and the venue, Spencer’s notebooks and synthesis provided the text.
Their classic study The Native Tribes of Central Australia was published in 1899, attracting international acclaim.
(Sir) James Frazer, celebrated author of The Golden Bough, acted as their literary agent in London with their
publisher Macmillan. This collaboration continued with later books. It was also Frazer who presented a prestigiously
signed petition to the governments of Victoria and South Australia. It resulted in paid leave being granted to
both men in 1901. They crossed the continent from Oodnadatta to Borroloola, in an important but exhausting
expedition, which probably overtaxed Gillen’s health. Under conditions of extreme heat and dust they made movie
films and wax-cylinder sound recordings of Aboriginal ceremonies, a landmark in the history of anthropological
fieldwork. During his career in the Centre, Gillen also took many still photographs. His important collection of
glass negatives is in the South Australian Museum.
Spencer and Gillen undertook a brief excursion northwest of Lake Eyre in 1903, which was their last joint
fieldwork. The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), and a popular version, Across Australia (1912),
completed their fieldwork record, although Spencer published The Arunta (1927) under their joint authorship.
Gillen had written over 150 letters to Spencer by 1903, some of them 40 pages in length. Spencer’s replies have
not survived, but Gillen’s letters were deposited in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford; copies exist at the Australian
Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra. While this correspondence supplemented and clarified Spencer’s own
material, the text of their books and the theories that structured them were Spencer’s.
Family considerations forced Gillen’s reluctant transfer as postmaster to Moonta in 1899 and to Port Pirie in- (Spencer Gillen was born while Spencer and Gillen were on their 1901 expedition and a sixth child was
born in 1903). Although Gillen hankered after a return to the Centre, he was able to re-create the scene only during
public talks, illustrated with his lanternslides. His greatest honour came in 1900, when he delivered the presidential
address to the ethnology and anthropology section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
Congress in Melbourne.
Frazer proposed to fund a Spencer and Gillen expedition to the Kimberleys, but it never eventuated. Gillen’s
health was never robust and it gradually deteriorated after 1901. During his last year he was confined to an invalid
chair. At this time, he was shocked by the death of his eldest son in a shooting accident. Gillen died at Woodville,
near Adelaide, on 5 June 1912, from a neurological disorder. A Catholic, Gillen was buried in Sevenhill College
cemetery near Clare. Across Australia was published a month after his death.
D J Mulvaney & J H Calaby, So Much That Is New, 1985; W B Spencer & F J Gillen, Across Australia, 1912; W F Morrison, The Aldine History
of South Australia, 1890; Gillen’s diary; the camp jottings... , 1968; Adelaide Advertiser and Adelaide Register, 6 June 1912; F J Gillen, 1875
diary, SA Museum.
D J MULVANEY, Vol 1.
GILRUTH, JOHN ANDERSON (1871–1937), veterinary scientist and Administrator, was born on 17 February
1871 at Auchmithie, near Arbroath, Scotland, second child of Andrew Gilruth and his wife Ann, nee Anderson.
The boy attended high school at Arbroath and, briefly, Dundee. Holiday association with a perceptive shepherd,
Jamie MacDonald, led him to an interest in veterinary science, but family pressure forced him to spend two years
as a law clerk before his father relented and allowed him to go to Glasgow Veterinary College in 1887. A brilliant
student, he graduated in 1892 and, in the following year, went to New Zealand as a government veterinary surgeon.
A pioneer of his profession in that country, he became Chief Veterinarian and Government Bacteriologist in 1897.
Though popular with his colleagues and farmers’ organisations, his blunt, forthright manner caused tensions with
government. When the University of Melbourne offered him the newly created Chair of Veterinary Pathology in